Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Delusions and why people have them

Senior Skeptic Michael Shermer has a look at the many delusions afflicting too many people, "from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, to hidden messages revealed while playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards - and explains the evolutionary and cognitive basis for these lapses in reason."

4 Comments:

PC, have you read Shermer's book Why People Believe Weird Things? He devotes a chapter to Ayn Rand and the Objectivists, describing them as a cult, and analysing why such a committed group formed around Rand.

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Comments on this post

Delusions and why people have them
PC, have you read Shermer's book Why People Believe Weird Things? He devotes a chapter to Ayn Rand and the Objectivists, describing them as a cult, and analysing why such a committed group formed around Rand.

Heh. Ayn Rand and the Objectivists. Sounds like a band. :-)
Oh yeah. I might need to read it again and see how it now stacks up, but reading it at the time it came out I thought the people he was referring to largely deserved what he said.

That said, of course, Rand's epistemology is just what the Sceptics themselves need.
I heard Michael Shermer in a debate recently where he opened with a joke/jibe at the Muslim Muhammed cartoon stupidity. He's got a good sense of humour:

"Did you hear about the nasty incident last week involving 5000 rioting atheists in Denmark?

They stormed the office of a Danish newspaper on reports that 12 pieces of blank paper were found on a cartoonist's desk"...
I take it you've never listened to "Stairway to Heaven" backwards.